I have been married to my husband who is from Turkey for 8 years and we have a daughter together who is 4 years old. We applied under exceptional circumstances for my husband to come and live as a family in April 2018 but we were refused. The refusal included details of another person and did not report any correct information. Our local MP has been in contact with the home office, who are not really cooperating very well. We have since appealed the decision and are still currently living in limbo whilst we await an update

Our daughter has really been affected by not having her dad around words honestly cannot describe how awful and heart-breaking it has been for me to witness the change in her behaviour, when we are together as a family she is a very happy and content little girl. Right after we came back from seeing her dad 3 months ago, she went through a stage of pulling her own hair out, it was terrible and it lasted for about a month. We were previously able to go and visit her dad in Turkey every 2 to 3 months, but now our daughter has started full time school, and I am back at work, we don’t get the opportunity to visit until at least every 5-6 months.

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I am too frightened to approach for any help from a medical professional as I didn’t want social services to be contacted and involved, and start doubting us as parents, we just want to be a family but are prevented from that because of these laws, and because of the home office poor decision making.

The only way our daughter sees her daddy is through a telephone which every time she constantly kisses and hugs the phone and doesn’t want to let it go.

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When she gets ill, she doesn’t want me around her, she constantly cries and screams for her dad to the point where I have to call him via video call, just so he can settle her down as she refuses to for me.

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Since our daughter started school she is constantly seeing other children with their daddy’s, and now the questions have now begun such as “why doesn’t daddy want to live in the house with me?” and “why doesn’t daddy not want to take me to school like other daddy’s do?” I honestly have no answers for these questions and try to stop the tears from filling up in my eyes every time she asks them. She says at least 10 times a day “I miss my daddy mammy do you think he misses me?”

She has always been a very confident little girl, but with each day that goes past without her daddy she is losing her confidence and becoming quite confined.

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For us as parents, the words tiring and heart-breaking doesn’t come close when we have to describe how we are dealing with this. The onus is on me to hold this all together, I feel like I’m holding a wall and if I drop it, everything around me will crumble, but I have to be strong for our family.